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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1892. 



SHAKESPEARE. 



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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LTPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1892. 



TRa.tir 
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Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 




SHAKESPEARE. 



Shakespeare, William, the greatest of 
dramatic poets, was born at Stratford-on-Avon 
towards the close of April, 1564. The birthday 
is uncertain ; tradition points to April 23, O. s. , 
corresponding to our 5th May; on April 26 the 
infant was baptised. The house in Henley Street 
which is believed to be the birthplace may still be 
seen — as restored. The child's father, John Shake- 
speare, son of Richard Shakespeare, a Warwick- 
shire farmer, was a fell-monger and glover, perhaps 
also a butcher, and certainly a dealer at times in 
corn and timber. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, 
daughter of a wealthy farmer, who on dying had 
left her a small estate named Asbies, with the 
reversion to part of another property at Snitterfield. 
John Shakespeare for a time prospered ; in 1561 he 
became chamberlain of the borough, afterwards an 
alderman, and in 1568 high-bailiff of Stratford. 
The boy William was John Shakespeare's third 
child ; two daughters born before him died in 
infancy. The later born children were five — two 
daughters, of whom one outlived the dramatist, 
and three sons, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund ; 
the last of these became an actor and died in 1607. 

Although John Shakespeare was a respected 
burgess of Stratford, his education was small ; he 
could not write his name. In all probability his 
eldest' son was educated at the free school of Strat- 
ford, where beside English he would learn some- 
thing of Latin, possibly even the elements of Greek. 
' Small Latin and less Greek ' is Ben Jonson's 
description of the scholarship of his great contem- 
porary. The Greek, if any, must have been small 
indeed. At a later time Shakespeare seems to 
have acquired a little French, and possibly some- 



4 SHAKESPEARE. 

thing of Italian. As a boy he may have seen 
dramatic entertainments at Stratford, for com- 
panies visited the town and performed there on 
several occasions from the year of his father's bailiff- 
ship onwards. In 1575 Leicester received Queen 
Elizabeth at Kenil worth, and it is possible that 
John Shakespeare may have taken his eldest son 
to look at the masques and mummeries ; Oberon's 
description of the 'mermaid on a dolphin's back' 
{Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 148-168) has 
been supposed to be a reminiscence of the occasion. 
In 1578 the fortunes of John Shakespeare under- 
went an unfavourable change, and for many years 
pecuniary troubles pressed upon him ; he mort- 
gaged the Asbies estate, and sold his wife's rever- 
sionary interests at Snitterfield ; he ceased to 
attend the town council ; his taxes were remitted ; 
as late as 1592 it is reported of him that he did not 
attend church for fear of ' processe for debt. ' At 
what date he removed his son from school we can- 
not tell. Perhaps, as one tradition has it, the boy 
was apprenticed to a butcher ; perhaps he Avas for 
a time an attorney's clerk — a conjecture founded 
on certain supposed allusions of his dramatic con- 
temporary Nash, and on the fact that the legal 
references in Shakespeare's plays and poems are 
very numerous and give evidence of information 
which is remarkably correct. The blank in our 
knowledge of this period of his life is thus filled 
with guesses — guesses not altogether unprofitable. 
The worldly prudence of Shakespeare's manhood 
may have come to him as the lesson of these early 
years of trouble in his father's house. But the 
lesson of prudence was not learned all at once. A 
bond given previous to marriage between William 
Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, dated November 
28, 1582, was found in 1836 in the registry of 
Worcester. The marriage was to take place after 
the banns had been once asked. Anne Hatha- 
way was the daughter of a substantial yeoman, 
lately dead, of Shottery in the parish of Stratford ; 
she was eight years older than the bridegroom, 
who was only in his nineteenth year ; she was 
socially his inferior, and it is probable that she 
was uneducated. The marriage may have been 
pressed forward by Anne's friends in order that 
a child — Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna 
(baptised May 26, 1583) — might be born in lawful 
wedlock. Mr Halliwell-Phillipps argues that the 
bond was not improbably preceded by a contract, 
which, according to the customs of the time, would 



SHAKESPEARE. 5 

have given the contracting parties the mutual 
rights of husband and wife, though as yet un- 
sanctioned by the church. The marriage was 
doubtless solemnised soon after the date of the 
bond, but where and on what day is unknown. 
Two years after the birth of Susanna twins were 
born, Hamnet and Judith (baptised February 2, 
1585). These three were Shakespeare's only chil- 
dren. Hamnet (probably named after a Stratford 
friend and neighbour, Hamnet Sadler) died in his 
twelfth year (buried August 11, 1596) ; both daugh- 
ters survived their father. 

Three or four years, as it is believed, after his 
marriage Shakespeare quitted his native town. 
'He had,' says his first biographer, Rowe, 'by a 
misfortune, common enough to young fellows, 
fallen into ill company, and, amongst them, some 
that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing 
engaged him more than once in robbing a park 
that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, 
near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by 
that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too 
severely ; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, 
he made a ballad upon him. And though this, 
probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet 
it is said to have been so very bitter that it re- 
doubled the prosecution against him to that degree 
that he was obliged to leave his business and family 
in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself 
in London.' It seems likely that in essentials the 
story thus reported by Rowe is true, and a verse 
of the ballad — whether genuine or written, as is 
more likely, to suit the story — has been given by 
Oldys. In The Merry Wives of Windsor Justice 
Shallow complains of Falstaff's having killed his 
deer ; there are ' luces ' in the Shallow coat-of- 
arms as in that of the Lucy family, which luces in 
the Welsh parson's pronunciation become ' louses ' 
— a play on words occurring also in the alleged 
stanza of Shakespeare's offensive ballad. 

A tradition, which appears to have come down 
from Betterton and D'Avenant, relates that Shake- 
speare's first employment in London was that of 
holding at the playhouse door the horses of those 
gentlemen who rode to the theatre unattended by 
servants. ' In this office,' so Johnson received the 
tale from Pope, ' he became so conspicuous for his 
care and readiness that in a short time every man 
as he alighted called for Will Shakespeare, and 
scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse 
while Will Shakespeare could be had ;' by-and-by 



6 SHAKESPEARE, 

he hired boys to wait under his superintendence, and 
i Shakespeare's Boys ' continued to be their name 
long after their master had risen to higher employ- 
ment. Mr Halliwell-Phillipps holds that the story 
need not be set aside as an absolute fiction. The 
date of Shakespeare's flight to London can hardly 
have been earlier than 1585, and it is not likely to 
have been later than 1587. Mr Fleay conjectures 
that in the last-named year he joined Lord Leices- 
ter's players during their visit to Stratford, or soon 
after that visit ; but tradition lends no support to 
the supposition that Shakespeare left his home 
with a view to trying his fortune on the stage. 
Except that we find his name joined with that of 
his father in an attempt made in 1587 to assign 
the Asbies property to the mortgagee, we know 
nothing for certain of Shakespeare's life from the 
date of his twin-children's birth until the year 1592, 
when he was an actor and a rising playwright. 
The dramatist Robert Greene, dying in that year, 
addressed three of his brother- authors, Marlowe, 
Peele, and Nash or Lodge, in a passage of his pam- 
phlet, Greene's Groatsworth of Wit bought with a 
Million of Repentance , warning them against the 
ungrateful and inconstant race of players : ' Yes, 
trust them not : for there is an upstart crow, beau- 
tified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart 
wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able 
to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you : 
and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his 
own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.' 
The line of verse here parodied, 

Oh, tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide, 

occurs in the Third Part of Henry VI. and in the 
old play, Richard Duke of York, on which it is 
founded. Greene suggests that Shakespeare has 
been pilfering from a play in which he and Mar- 
lowe had each a hand. The editor of Greene's 
pamphlet, Henry Chettle, soon after* in his pam- 
phlet Kind- Harts Dream (December 1592), made 
a handsome apology to Shakespeare : ' I am as 
sory as if the originall fault had been my faulte, 
because my selfe have seene his [Shakespeare's] 
demeanor no lesse civill than he exelent in the 
qualitie he professes ; besides, divers of worship 
have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which 
argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in 
writting, that aprooves his art. ' From these refer- 
ences we infer that Shakespeare had already made 
himself a valuable member of his dramatic com- 



SHAKESPEARE. 7 

pany, that lie was already known as a writer for 
the stage, that his merit as an actor ('quality' 
having special reference to this) was not incon- 
siderable, and that as a man he was honourable in 
all his acts. High eminence as an actor Shake- 
speare did not attain, though it appears from 
Hamlet's advice to the players that he had a just 
perception of the actor's merits and defects. Rowe 
assures us that ' the top of his performance was the 
ghost in his own Hamlet.' It is believed that he 
took the part of Old Knowell in Jonson's Every 
Man in his Humour, and perhaps that of the vener- 
able Adam in As You Like It. 

In 1593 appeared Shakespeare's first published 
work, the narrative poem, written in a six -line 
stanza, Venus and Adonis. It is dedicated to the 
young Earl of Southampton, the poet's patron and 
friend, who, according to a tradition derived from 
D'Avenant, on one occasion proved his friendship 
by a large gift of money to enable Shakespeare ' to 
go through with a purchase he had a mind to.' 
Venus and Adonis is described by its author as 
1 the first heir of his invention ;' it is an elaborate 
piece of Renaissance paganism, setting forth ideals 
of sensuous beauty, male and female, in the persons 
of the amorous goddess and of the young hunter, 
whose coldness meets and foils her passion. Close 
observation of nature and much sweetness of versi- 
fication characterise the poem ; the passages of 
dialogue are, as it were, studies in the casuistry 
of passion ; elaborate conceits, such as few Eliza- 
bethan poets could escape from, abound. The 
dedication promises a 'graver labour,' and this 
soon followed in the Luerece (published 1594). 
The theme of the Venus is here, as it were, re- 
versed ; the lawless passion of Tarquin is confronted 
by the ardent chastity of the Roman wife. The 
stanza is one of seven lines ; the dedication is again 
to Southampton, and its words express strong and 
deep devotion. Both the Venus and the Luerece 
became immediately popular, and were many times 
reprinted. 

Shakespeare's earliest dramatic exercises con- 
sisted probably in adapting to the stage plays by 
other authors which had grown a little out of date. 
Many critics have pointed to Titus Andronicus as 
an example of such work, and a tradition put on 
record in 1687 confirms this view. The play cer- 
tainly belongs to a moment in the history of 
English tragedy which we may describe as pre- 
Shakespearian ; it reeks with blood ; its effects 



8 SHAKESPEARE. 

are rather those of horror than of dramatic terror 
and pity ; if Shakespeare wrote it we must believe 
that he wrote it before his genius had discovered 
its true direction. Another of the early plays in 
which Shakespeare probably worked upon older 
material is the First Part of Henry VI; some 
critics have held that in its construction three 
hands can be distinguished. However this may 
be, we accept it as all but certain that the play 
contains pre- Shakespearian work ; we are pleased 
to think that the ignoble portraiture of Joan of 
Arc is not of our great dramatist's conceiving ; in 
the Temple-garden scene (ii. 4), which tells of the 
plucking of the white rose and the red, we have 
perhaps Shakespeare's chief contribution to this 
drama. 

We dare not say for certain at what precise date 
Shakespeare's career as a dramatic author began ; 
but 1589-90 cannot be far astray. Among his 
earliest experiments in comedy were Love's Labour's 
Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and The Two Gentle- 
men of Verona ; among the earliest historical 
dramas were the second and third parts of Henry 
VI, King Richard III, and King Richard II; the 
first romantic tragedy (setting aside Titus Androni- 
cus) was undoubtedly Romeo and Jtdiet. The 
evidence by which the chronology of Shakespeare's 
several works is ascertained or inferred with more 
or less probability is of various kinds, including 
entries of publication or intended publication in 
the Stationers' Registers ; statements about the 
plays and poems, or allusions to them, or quota- 
tions from them by contemporary writers in works 
of known dates ; facts connected with the history 
of dramatic companies which presented plays of 
Shakespeare ; allusions in the plays to historical 
events, and quotations by Shakespeare from publi- 
cations of the day. We cannot fail also to observe 
the growth of Shakespeare's imaginative power, 
his intellectual reach, his moral depth, his spiritual 
wisdom ; with respect to each of these we must 
needs recognise a profound difference between 
the earlier and the later plays. At the same time 
we perceive a gradual change, or rather a group of 
changes, taking place in the structure of his dra- 
matic verse. In his verse of early date the sense 
closes with the line far more frequently than is the 
ca,se in his verse of a later period, and with this 
growing tendency to carry the sense beyond the 
line arises also an inclination or a readiness to 
place as the final word of the line some word such 



SHAKESPEARE. 9 

as am, do, I ( ' light ending'), or even such as and, 
°ff if( ' wea k ending ' ), which precipitates the reader 
or pronouncer of the passage into the next follow- 
ing line. Thus in its structure the versification 
becomes more varied and freer, or, if not freer, sub- 
ject to subtler and less obvious laws. It is part of 
the same process that Shakespeare gradually ceased 
from employing rhyme for dramatic purposes, and 
again that he allowed the decasyllabic line to pass 
much more frequently into one of eleven syllables 
('double ending' or 'feminine ending'). These 
peculiarities of versification admit of statistical 
calculations in their process of development, and 
have formed the subject of much careful study 
among recent Shakespearian scholars. 

In his early comedies Shakespeare is trying, as it 
were, his 'prentice hand in various experiments. 
Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1590) is perhaps his 
first original play ; no source is known ; some of 
the leading characters seem to be named after 
persons of note in recent or contemporary French 
history. Learned pedantry, fantastical extrava- 
gance of speech, the affectations of amorous poetry 
are satirised, and the dramatist pleads against 
artificial restraints on conduct and pseudo-ideals 
and in favour of nature and healthy passion. The 
play was partly rewritten about 1598, when it was 
presented before Queen Elizabeth. The Comedy 
of Errors (c. 1591) is a lively tangle of farcical 
incidents ; it is founded on the Mencechmi of 
Plautus, which was translated into English by 
Warner, but Shakespeare seems to have reached 
the Mencechmi either in the original or through 
some other rendering. The twin-brothers Dromio 
are an addition to the twin-brothers of the Latin 
comedy, and heighten the laughable perplexi- 
ties of the play. A serious — almost a pathetic- 
background to the story is invented by Shake- 
speare, and in his Luciana we get a hintof some of 
his later beautiful creations of female character. 
The Tivo Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1592), a roman- 
tic love comedy, exhibits a marked advance in 
the presentation of character, though not in the 
construction of plot. There is apparently a con- 
nection between the story of the play and the 
story of the ' Shepherdess Felismena ' in the Diana 
of George of Montemayor, a Spanish piece of 
Arcadian romance. Shakespeare's humour breaks 
forth in his portrait of the clown, Launce ; 
Julia is the first of his charming feminine dis- 
guisers in male costume. This group of early 



10 SHAKESPEARE. 

comedies may be considered to close with A 
Midsummer Nightfs Dream (c. 1593-94). Hints 
for the play may have been taken from Chancer, 
from Plutarch, from the Diana, and from popular 
superstitions ; but it is essentially a new creation 
of the poet. No other comedy of Shakespeare has 
so large a lyrical element ; the figures of the lovers 
are faintly drawn, but the exquisite fairy-poetry, 
and the humours of sweet bully Bottom make 
sufficient amends. 

Meanwhile Shakespeare was also engaged on the 
English historical drama. In the Second and Third 
Parts of Henry VI. (c. 1592) he worked upon 
the basis of old plays written probably by Marlowe 
and Greene — possibly also Peele — and in the revision 
he may have had Marlowe as a collaborator. To 
come under the influence of that great master, 
Christopher Marlowe, was no disadvantage for one 
who could accept gains from every quarter and by 
the force of his genius could make them his own. 
In King Richard III. (c. 1593) he still writes 
in Marlowe's manner, though the play is wholly 
his own. As with Marlowe the protagonist every- 
where dominates over the secondary characters ; as 
with Marlowe a great criminal is made of fascinat- 
ing interest, by virtue of his unity of passion and 
of power. The chief source from which Shake- 
speare derived the material for his plays from 
English history was the chronicle of Holinshed. 
The three parts of Henry VI. and the tragedy of 
Richard III. present a continuous view of the rise 
and fall of the House of York. In King Richard 
II. ( c. 1594) is set forth the rise of the House of 
Lancaster. Here, though there are reminiscences 
from Edtvard II, , the influence of Marlowe is no 
longer supreme. The contrast between the hectic, 
self-indulgent, rhetorical Richard, who yet pos- 
sesses a certain regal charm, and his strong adver- 
sary Bolingbroke is a fine psychological study of a 
kind which is essentially Shakespearian and not 
Marlowesque. To mould into dramatic form the 
tough material of history was an admirable exer- 
cise in dramatic craftsmanship. The breadth and 
sanity of history also tended to preserve Shake- 
speare from the danger of romantic extravagance, 
such as injures the arfc of other dramatists who 
worked chiefly on stories of crime and passion sup- 
plied by Italian romance. King John (c. 1595) 
stands apart by its subject from both the York 
and the Lancaster series of plays ; but in style it 
has something in common with Richard II. It is 






SHAKESPEARE. 11 

founded not so much on Holinshed as on an old 
play, The Troublesome Raigne of King John, and 
a comparison of his original, seen in its poverty, 
crudity, and coarseness, with Shakespeare's crea- 
tion, where everything is ennobled, purified, and 
refined, affords a study of no little interest in 
dramatic art. 

In the passage which describes Oberon's vision 
in A Midsummer Nightfs Dream a magnificent 
compliment to Queen Elizabeth, 'the imperial 
votaress,' is introduced. Shakespeare as a mem- 
ber of the Lord Chamberlain's company appeared 
on several occasions before her majesty. In 
December 1594 he acted in two comedies at 
Greenwich Palace. On Innocents' Day of the same 
year the Comedy of Errors was presented in the 
hall of Gray's Inn. The playhouse in which at 
first he ordinarily performed was either that known 
as 'The Theatre' or 'The Curtain' on the Shore- 
ditch edge of London. From 1599 onwards he was 
connected with the new playhouse, 'The Globe,' 
which stood near London Bridge on the Southwark 
side, andJiere and in the Blackfriars Theatre ( 1596) 
his dramas were presented. His good sense and 
worldly prudence are remarkable ; before long he 
became a theatrical shareholder, and had gathered 
sufficient wealth to purchase ( 1597 ) 'New Place,' 
a large house in his native town. In 1596 his 
father, moved perhaps by the wish of the dramatist 
to occupy a dignified position, applied for a grant 
of coat-armour, and sought, probably without 
success, to recover the mortgaged Asbies estate. 
The year was one of affliction, for in August 
Shakespeare's only son — Hamnet — died. Yet Strat- 
ford remained dear to the sorrowing father ; he 
kept in close relation with his friends and former 
neighbours, and in 1598 was engaged in negotiating 
a loan for the corporation of the town. The run- 
away youth of ten or twelve years since was now 
a man of consideration and of substance. In 
September 1601 his father died ; his mother lived 
i until September 1608. In the year following his 
father's death Shakespeare bought for £320, then 
a large sum of money, 107 acres near Stratford, 
and enlarged the bounds of his New Place pro- 
perty. In 1605 he paid £440 for the unexpired 
term of the moiety of a lease of the tithes of Strat- 
ford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. 
He did not despise small things, for we find him 
in 1604 proceeding for the recovery of a debt 
amounting to £1, 15s. lOd. With boundless empire 



12 SHAKESPEARE. 

in the realm of imagination he valued also at its 
real worth a foothold on this material earth of 
ours. 

Among the earlier creations of his genius one 
stands apart from the rest — the tragedy of Borneo 
and Juliet. Possibly as we have it now the play 
is a revision dating about 1596-97 of a work 
written as early as 1592. It is founded in the 
main upon a poem, Bomeus and Juliet (1562), by 
Arthur Brooke, which versifies the tale taken by 
the French Boisteau from the Italian of Bandello ; 
but Shakespeare was also probably acquainted 
with Paynter's prose version of the story in his 
Palace of Pleasure (1567). The play has a lyrical 
sweetness, swiftness, and intensity such as we do 
not find elsewhere in its author's writings. It has 
many signs of early workmanship — much rhymed 
verse, and many conceits and over-strained ingenu- 
ities ; but these last are forgotten in the high 
passions of joy and anguish which find expression 
in the tragedy. The brilliant Mercutio, the tran- 
quil Friar, the humorous figure of the Nurse form 
an admirable background from which stand out 
the persons of the lovers — a youth and a maiden of 
the south possessed by one all-absorbing emotion. 
It is strange that Shakespeare did not follow up 
this early tragedy by any play of a like kind. 
Near to it in the chronological order probably 
stands the exquisite comedy of The Merchant 
of Venice (c. 1596), which occupies a middle 
place between the group of Shakespeare's earliest 
comedies and those which lie around the year 1600. 
The story of the caskets and the story of the pound 
of flesh had probably been brought together in an 
old play now lost which is mentioned by Stephen 
Gosson in 1579 ; but a play of that date can have 
afforded only rude material on which to work. The 
advance in characterisation from that of Shake- 
speare's previous comedies is remarkable ; no earlier 
heroine is comparable with Portia, and the gracious 
brightness of her figure is admirably enforced by 
its contrast with the dark colours in which the - 
Jew is painted. Something was doubtless derived 
from Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Barabas ; but Shy- 
lock, with all his passion of revenge, is human ; 
Barabas is an incredible monster of vices. Shake- 
speare's mastery of comedy aids him in the histor- 
ical plays which followed the First and Second 
Parts of King Henry IV. (1597-98) and King 
Henry V. (1599). In these dramas the fortunes of 
the House of Lancaster are followed to their glori- 



SHAKESPEARE. 13 

ous culmination. The turbulent years from the 
battle of Homildon Hill (1402) to the death of the 
usurping Bolingbroke (1413) supply the material 
for the historical portion of both parts of Henry IV. 
But interwoven with the history is that inimitable 
comedy of which Falstaff is hero. In the epilogue 
to the second part a promise is given that Falstaff 
shall again appear in another play in which the 
author will continue the story and make the specta- 
tors ' merry with fair Katherine of France. ' Shake- 
speare found it impossible to fulfil that promise. 
In the heroic drama of King Henry V. there is no 
place for the fat knight. The play is inspired by 
the ardent patriotism, the lofty national enthusi- 
asm of the age of Elizabeth. In the person of the 
king Shakespeare presents his ideal of a noble ruler 
of men. The material for Henry IV. and Henry V. 
was derived partly from Holinshed, partly from an 
old play entitled The Famous Victories of Henry V. 
Thus, as it were, with a trumpet-note of patriotic 
pride and battle-ardour Shakespeare's historical 
plays of England are brought to a close. 

There is a tradition dating from 1702 that Queen 
Elizabeth commanded Shakespeare to exhibit Fal- 
staff in love, and that in obedience he hastily wrote 
— in fourteen days it is said — The Merry Wives 
of Windsor (1598-99). The comedy is of special 
interest as a picture of middle-class English life, 
and may be Avell studied in comparison with 
Jonson's Every Man in his Humour; but the 
fatuous Falstaff of the Merry Wives is far different 
from the ever-detected yet never- defeated -Falstaff' 
of the historical plays. The comedy is written 
almost wholly in prose, and in its incidents 
approaches farce. It may be that it was about this 
time that Shakespeare adapted and enlarged the 
old play, The Taming of a Shrew, or perhaps 
adapted and enlarged a previous adaptation of that 
play by another hand. In The Taming of the 
Shreiv (1597?) Shakespeare's genius shows itself 
chiefly in connection with the boisterous heroine, 
her high-spirited tamer Petruchio, and the drunken 
tinker of the Induction. Conjectural attempts 
have been made to distinguish the scenes and lines 
which may be ascribed to Shakespeare ; but these 
must be accepted with reserve. The same animal 
spirits and intellectual vivacity which characterise 
the Merry Wives and the Shreiv appear — but now 
refined and exalted — in Much Ado about Nothing 
(1598-99). The story of Claudio and Hero had 
probably for its original a tale of Bandello trans- 



14 SHAKESPEARE. 

lated by Belleforest into French. The characters 
of Beatrice and Benedick, it is supposed, are en- 
tirely original creations of the dramatist ; there 
is in them something of his own Rosaline and 
Berowne, and it was about this time that he re- 
handled Love's Labour's Lost, the play in which we 
make acquaintance with this earlier pair of lovers. 
As You Like Lt (1599) and Twelfth Night (1600-1) 
are the last of the wholly joyous comedies of 
this period. In the former there is indeed a simu- 
lacrum of melancholy in Jaques' affectation of 
that mood as a fashion ; but of real gloom, of real 
sorrow there is not a trace. This charming pas- 
toral comedy is dramatised from a prose tale by 
Shakespeare's contemporary Lodge, entitled Rosa- 
lynde, Euphues Golden Legacie (1590), which itself 
follows the Tale of Gamely n, erroneously intro- 
duced as Chaucer's in some editions of the Canter- 
bury Tales. In not a few scenes of Tivelfth Night 
the mirth is fast and high, but the central comic 
figure, Malvolio, has something of dignity, almost 
of majesty, in his extravagant and solemn self- 
importance. Viola is perhaps the most charming 
of Shakespeare's maiden masquers in male attire ; 
if she has not the intellectual brilliance of Rosa- 
lind, she has even more of maiden sweetness. The 
plot resembles that of an Italian play GV Lngannati, 
and it may also be found in a tale translated into 
French by Belleforest from Bandello. But the 
group of jesters and humorists with their victim 
Malvolio are of Shakespeare's invention. 

About the year 1600-1 a change begins to 
develop itself in the spirit of Shakespeare's writ- 
ings ; his mirth becomes touched with seriousness 
or infected with bitterness, and soon he ceases to 
write comedy. Some students have supposed that 
this transition from a joyous to a sadder temper is 
connected Avith events which are shadowed forth in 
Shakespeare's Sonnets. The volume of Sonnets was 
not published until 1609, but Shakespeare's ' sugred 
sonnets among his private friends ' were mentioned 
by Francis Meres (who gives a very important list 
of the poet's writings) in his Palladis Tamia 
(1598), and in the following year the Sonnets after- 
wards numbered 138 and 144 were printed in a 
surreptitious miscellany of verse ascribed to Shake- 
speare by the bookseller Jaggard, and entitled The 
Passionate Pilgrim. The 1609 edition of Sonnets 
is dedicated by the publisher T. Thorpe to ' Mr 
W. H. ' as ' the onlie begetter of these insuing 
Sonnets.' The poems, 154 in number, form two 



SHA KESPEA RE. 1 5 

groups — 1-126 addressed to a beautiful young man 
of high station, 127-154 either addressed to or 
referring to a married woman not beautiful accord- 
ing to the conventional standard, of dark com- 
plexion, highly accomplished, fascinating, but of 
stained character and irregular conduct. The two 
groups are connected. Shakespeare's young friend 
and patron, whom he addresses in words of 
measureless devotion, seems to have fallen into the 
toils of the woman to whom Shakespeare was him- 
self attached by a passion which he felt to be 
degrading, yet which he could not overcome. The 
woman yielded herself to the younger admirer who 
was socially the superior of Shakespeare. Hence 
an alienation between the friends, increased by the 
fact that the youth was now the favourer of a rival 
poet ; but in the close all wrongs were forgotten 
and the friendship renewed on a firmer basis. 
Such is the story to be read in the Sonnets, if we 
take them, as they ought to be taken, in their 
natural sense. But some critics have imagined 
that they deal with ideal themes or may set forth 
a spiritual allegory. Many attempts have been 
made to identify the persons of Mr W. H., the 
dark woman, and the rival poet. The happiest 
guess with respect to the last is that he was 
George Chapman. It has been conjectured that 
Mr W. H. was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- 
ampton (the initials reversed), and again that he 
Avas William Herbert, the young Earl of Pembroke, 
who was certainly a patron of Shakespeare. An 
ingenious argument has been set forth by Mr 
T. Tyler to prove that the woman of the Sonnets 
was Mary Fitton, a mistress of William Herbert. 
But it is questionable whether the portraits of Mary 
Fitton and of Pembroke agree with the indications 
afforded in the Sonnets. In truth the persons have 
not yet been identified ; no conjecture has any but 
the most insecure support ; and it is not likely 
that the facts so long hidden will ever be revealed. 
In his earliest plays Shakespeare tried his hand, 
as an apprentice in the craft, in many and various 
directions. In the English historical plays and the 
joyous comedy he exhibits his mastery of the 
broad field of human life. But as yet he had not 
searched the profounder mysteries of our being, 
nor handled the deeper and darker passions of 
humanity. About the opening of the 1 7th century, 
as we have noticed, a change takes place in the 
spirit of his creations. He still writes comedy, 
but the gaiety of the earlier comedies is gone. 



16 SHAKESPEARE. 

All's Well that Ends Well (c. 1601-2) is least 
happy in its mirthful scenes ; it is at its Lest 
where the strong-willed heroine Helena appears, 
whose task is to seek after and save the unworthy 
youth to whom she has given her heart. Some 
critics have supposed that the play as we have 
it is Shakespeare's rehandling of an earlier version 
from his own pen originally entitled Love's Labour's 
Won — a play of that name being included in Meres's 
list of the year 1598. But thjs theory is incapable 
of verification. The story came to Shakespeare 
from Boccaccio" through Pay liter's Palace of 
Pleasure. Measure for Measure (c. 1603) hardly 
deserves the name of comedy ; it is a searching of 
the mystery of self-deceit in the heart of a man, 
and the exhibition of an ideal of virginal chastity 
and strength in the person of the heroine, Isabella. 
The city life represented in the play is base and 
foul ; the prison-scenes are ennobled by .profound 
imaginative speculations upon life and death. It 
is the darkest of the comedies of Shakespeare. 
The subject had previously been handled dramati- 
cally in Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1578), 
and the same author had told the tale in prose in 
his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582). Perhaps 
it is to this date (1603) that Troilus and Cress ida 
belongs, but the chronology as well as the purport 
of the play is perplexing. It has been suggested 
that different portions of the comedy were written 
at different dates ; but here again we are in the 
region of conjecture. Certain passages, as, for 
example, Hector's last battle, are probably by 
another hand than Shakespeare's. The sources of 
the play are Chaucer's poem on the same subject, 
Caxton's translation from the French Becuyles, or 
Destruction of Troy, and Chapman's Homer. Some 
have even fancied that Shakespeare's design was 
to turn into ridicule the classical heroes of Chap- 
man, the supposed rival poet of the Sonnets. But 
there is nowhere a nobler representative of worldly 
wisdom, in a high sense of the word, than Shake- 
speare's Ulysses. It may be called the comedy of 
disillusion — a kind of foil to Romeo and Juliet. 
The callow passion of the youthful hero is basely 
deceived by Cressida, a born light-o'-love ; but in 
the end Troilus masters his boyish despair, and 
grows firm-set in his vigorous manhood. The 
contrast between worldly wisdom and adolescent 
enthusiasm is perhaps the most striking thing in 
the play. 

Before he ceased for a time to write comedy 



SHAKESPEARE. 17 

Shakespeare had probably begun that great series 
of tragedies which occupied him during the opening 
years of the 17th century. Julius Ccesar (1601) and 
Hamlet (1602) are tragedies in which reflection, 
as a motive- power, holds its own with emotion ; 
in the later tragedies the chief characters are 
whirled away by passion ; here they are misled by 
thought. In North's translation of Plutarch's 
Lives Shakespeare found admirable material for 
his Roman plays, and he used it as a true creative 
poet, and not as a mere antiquary. The Brutus of 
Julius Cwsar is an idealist dealing with practical 
affairs, constantly in error, yet honoured by us be- 
cause his errors are those which only a man of noble 
nature could commit. Csesar is represented in his 
decline, with many infirmities, but his presence 
and power are predominant through the tragedy 
in the impersonal form of Caesarism, which sways 
the spirits of men and compels the catastrophe. 
Hamlet is perhaps founded on an older play, which 
certainly existed, and produced a great impression 
on the stage about 1588-89. Shakespeare doubt- 
less read the story, originally derived from Saxo 
Grammaticus, in the English prose of the Hystorie 
of Hamlet translated from the French of Belief orest. 
He represents, as Goethe has put it, ' the effects of 
a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the per- 
formance of it.' Hamlet is summoned to avenge 
his father's murder, but habits of speculation, an 
excitable emotional temperament, and an untrained 
will disqualify him for acting the part of a 
justiciary. He accomplishes his purpose at last, 
but as it were by chance-medley. 

And now tragedy succeeded tragedy, each of 
surpassing greatness, and all the depths were 
sounded. Othello {c. 1604), founded on a tale given 
in Cinthio's Hecatommithi, exhibits a free and noble 
nature taken in the toils of jealousy, and perishing 
in the struggle for deliverance. The betrayer, 
Iago, is the nearest approach to an incarnation of 
absolute evil to be found in Shakespeare's plays. 
King Lear (1605) derived some of its substance 
from an old play on the same subject as well 
as from Holinshed's Chronicle ; the episode of 
Gloucester and his sons is adapted from Sidney's 
Arcadia. The tragedy is the most stupendous 
in our literature ; the bonds of natural affection, 
of loyalty, of the amity of nations, almost of the 
laws of nature, are broken or convulsed ; but 
justice asserts itself in the close, and if Cordelia 
dies, she dies a martyr of redeeming love. Macbeth 



18 SHAKESPEARE. 

(c. 1606) is the tragedy of criminal ambition. The 
source is once again Holinshed. A theory of 
Messrs Clark and Wright that the play, as we 
have it, is disfigured by the interpolations of 
another dramatist — perhaps Middleton — must be 
regarded as of doubtful worth. The tragedy is 
distinguished by the unpausing rapidity of its 
action. In Antony and Cleopatra (1607) Shake- 
speare returns to Roman history, but here Roman 
manhood is sapped by the sensual witchery of the 
East. The most marvellous of Shakespeare's 
creations of female character is surely Cleopatra — 
Antony's ' serpent of old Nilus. ' Such materials 
for the play as were not supplied by the poet's 
creative imagination he obtained from Plutarch's 
life of Antony in North's translation. From Plu- 
tarch also came the material for Coriolanus (c. 1608). 
The poet passes from Rome of the empire to the 
earlier Rome of the consuls, and from the history 
of a great nature ruined by voluptuous relaxation 
of its powers to that of a great nature ruined 
by self-centred pride. As the Roman wife was 
shown in the Portia of Julius Ccesar, so here is 
presented the Roman mother in the majestic figure 
of Volumnia. The series of great tragedies closes 
perhaps with Timon of Athens (c. 1607-8), but the 
play is only in part by Shakespeare. It describes 
the total eclipse of faith, hope, charity in the un- 
disciplined spirit of Timon, who passes from an 
easy, indulgent optimism to a wild misanthropy. 
Nowhere is Shakespeare a greater dramatic rhetori- 
cian than in some of the misanthropist's declama- 
tory speeches. The story was taken from Paynter's 
Palace of Pleasure, and certain gleanings were 
added from Plutarch and from Lucian. 

At this point once again a change shows itself 
in the spirit of Shakespeare. After passion comes 
peace ; after the poetry of revolt comes the poetry 
of reconciliation ; after the breaking of bonds — the 
bonds of the family, of the state, and even of 
humanity itself — come the knitting of human 
bonds, the meeting of parted kinsfolk, the recon- 
ciliation of alienated friends. The last plays of 
Shakespeare are comedies, but they might be aptly 
named romances, for romantic beauty presides over 
them rather than mirth, they have in them ele- 
ments of wonder and delight, their gladness is 
purified and rarefied, as the happiness might be of 
'one who has had a great experience of sorrow ; the 
characters move amid lovely, natural surround- 
ings ; mountain and sea, the inland meadows, the 



SHAKESPEARE. 19 

island shores lend their glory or their grace to 
these exquisite plays. Pericles (1608), or rather 
Shakespeare's part of that play (Acts III. IV. V., 
omitting perhaps III. sc. ii. v. vi.), might better 
be named the romance of Marina, the lost daughter 
of Pericles. The description of the sea-storm could 
have come from no other hand than Shakespeare's ; 
the scenes which tell of the recovery by Pericles 
of wife and child anticipate like scenes in The 
Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline. The 
story of Pericles had been told by Gower, who is 
introduced as 'presenter' of the play, and by 
Lawrence Twine in his Patterne of Painfull 
Adventures (1607) ; and there is a novel by George 
Wilkins (1608) founded upon the play. Cymbeline 
(1609) is also a tale of lost children at length 
recovered, and of a wife separated from her husband, 
but finally reunited to him. Something is derived 
from Holinshed, but with the historical matter is 
connected a story which in a different form may 
be found in Boccaccio's Decameron. The Tempest 
may have been written late in the year 1610 ; but 
it has been ingeniously argued by Dr. Garnett that 
Shakespeare produced it as a court-play on the 
occasion of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth 
to the Elector Palatine, 1613, and that the en- 
chanter Prospero is an idealised and complimentary 
representation of the 'wisest fool in Christendom,' 
King James I. No source of the play has been 
ascertained, but some of the characters and inci- 
dents resemble those of Jacob Ayrer's Die Schone 
Sidea, and it is believed that this German play and 
The Tempest must have had some common original. 
The Winter's Tale (1610-11) dramatises a novel 
by Robert Greene named Pandosto (1588) ; that 
most delightful of roving rogues, Autolycus, is 
however a creation of Shakespeare. In Hermione 
and Perdita we have examples of two contrasted 
groups of characters represented in Shakespeare's 
last plays — the aged and experienced sufferers, 
who have been ennobled by sorrow, and the young 
who are ennobled by their innocence and pure joy 
of life. 

Apart from the other historical English plays 
both in subject and in date stands King Henry 
VIII. (1612-13). The play is certainly in part 
by Fletcher, and an attempt has been made to 
prove that the remainder is from the hand of 
Massinger. But we may perhaps accept it as 
most likely that Shakespeare wrote the following 
portions : Acts I. i. ii. ; II. iii. iv. ; III. ii. (to 



20 SHAKESPEARE. 

exit king) ; V. i. The play lacks unity ; it has 
not altogether unaptly been described by Hertz- 
berg as ' a chronicle-history with three and a half 
catastrophes, varied by a marriage and a corona- 
tion pageant, ending abruptly with a child's 
baptism.' But there is no lack of unity in the 
conception of those dramatis persona? who inter- 
ested Shakespeare — the king, Wolsey, and above 
all Queen Katharine, a noble and patient sufferer. 
Whether we have work by Shakespeare in another 
play partly written by Fletcher — The Two Noble 
Kinsmen — is more doubtful. Fletcher's collabor- 
ator may here have been Massinger, but there are 
passages which seem beyond Massinger's reach. 
The play is founded on Chaucer's Knightes Tale. 
If Shakespeare had a hand in The Two Noble 
Kinsmen it was during the last period of his 
dramatic career. Not so with Edward III., in 
parts of which some critics believe that they can 
trace the handiwork of Shakespeare (from king's 
entrance, I. ii., to end of Act II.) ; if he was at all 
concerned with that play it must have been before 
1595. 

At what date Shakespeare ceased to appear on 
the stage as an actor we cannot certainly say. He 
took a part in the representation of Jonson's 
Sejanus at the Globe in 1603 or 1604. In 1610 the 
Burbages speak of placing him with others as an 
actor at Blackfriars Theatre ; but there are grounds 
for supposing that he had withdrawn from the 
stage at that date. In 1607 his elder daughter, 
Susanna, married a prosperous physician of Strat- 
ford, Mr John Hall, M.A., and early next year 
Shakespeare's grandchild Elizabeth Hall was born. 
He sold his shares in the Globe probably between 
1611 and 1613 ; but while residing chiefly at Strat- 
ford it seems likely that he desired to possess a 
town residence, for in March 1613 he bought for 
£140 a house near the Blackfriars Theatre. In 
the same year the Globe Theatre was burned down 
while the play of Henry VIII. was being enacted, 
and it may be that stage copies of Shakespeare's 
plays were destroyed on this occasion. ' The 
latter part of his life,' says his first biographer 
Rowe, speaking of his Stratford days, ' was spent 
as all men of sense may wish theirs may be, in 
ease, retirement, and the conversation of his 
friends. . . . His pleasurable wit and good-nature 
engaged him in the acquaintance and entitled him 
to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neigh- 
bourhood. ' In February 1616 his younger daughter, 



SHAKESPEARE. 21 

Judith, was married to Thomas Quiney, a vintner 
of Stratford. She bore three children, two of 
whom lived to manhood, but both died childless. 
Their mother lived on to the days of the Restora- 
tion of Charles II. Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's 
first-born grandchild, married Thomas Nash (1626), 
and secondly, Sir John Barnard (1649). She died 
without issue in 1670, the last descendant of the 
poet. 

In March 1616 Shakespeare became seriously 
ill. A draft of his will had recently been made, 
and now he attached his signature to the several 
pages of the draft. The bulk of his worldly goods 
he left to his elder daughter, but Judith was given 
a considerable sum of money. His sister, Joan 
Hart, received a legacy of £50 and a life-interest 
in her house in Stratford. His friends in the 
country, certain fellow- actors, his nephews, his 
godson, and the Stratford poor were all remem- 
bered. To his wife he left, by an interlineation in 
the will, and perhaps to indulge some fancy of 
hers, his second-best bed ; she was sufficiently 
provided for, without special mention, by free 
bench and dower. On April 23, 1616, which is 
supposed to be the anniversary of his birthday, 
Shakespeare died. According to a tradition 
handed down by Ward, the vicar of Stratford, his 
last illness was a fever contracted after a merry 
meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson. Halliwell- 
Phillipps supposes that it is as likely to have been 
caused by the poison of filth and ill-drainage which 
hung about New Place. 

On April 25 the body was laid at rest in the 
chancel of the parish church, near the northern 
wall. On a slab which marks the spot are in- 
scribed lines traditionally attributed to Shake- 
speare. 

Good Friend for Iesus sake forbeare 

To digg the dust encloased heare ; 

Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, 

And curst be he that moves my bones. 

The removal of bones to the charnel-house was 
then a common practice. During the life of Shake- 
speare's widow — who died August 6, 1623 — a 
monument was erected in the church, on the 
chancel wall hard by the grave. It was sculptured 
by Gerard Johnson or one of his sons. A bust of 
blue limestone was placed between Corinthian 
columns of black marble. The head is massive, 
the forehead lofty and domed, the face that of a 
cheerful, prosperous man. The poet is represented 



22 SHAKESPEARE. 

as composing his works, pen in hand. * The effigy 
was originally painted in colours to resemble life. 
The face and hands were of a flesh colour ; the 
eyes of a light hazel; the hair* and beard were 
auburn. The doublet was scarlet, and the loose 
gown without sleeves worn over it was black.' 
Besides this somewhat rude portrait, we possess a 
portrait-print by Droeshout prefixed to the first 
folio edition of Shakespeare's works (1623). It is 
an ill-executed engraving, but is of value as con- 
firming the features of the bust in their general 
characteristics. These are the only certain por- 
traits. A death-mask, known as the Kesselstadt 
death-mask, presenting a remarkable and noble 
face, may possibly be genuine ; but the evidence 
leaves much room for doubt. Of many alleged 
painted portraits that known as the Chandos 
portrait has found, perhaps, the widest acceptance. 

The central impression which his writings and 
the story of his life leave upon us with respect to 
the man Shakespeare is that of the completeness of 
his humanity, and the sanity which results from 
such completeness. His life in the world of imagina- 
tion is the widest and deepest on record ; but he 
was not, like so many of the race of poets, indiffer- 
ent to the practical, material life. He was certainly 
a man of strong passions ; he was profoundly 
speculative — in the way of an imaginative thinker 
— with reference to the problems of the soul ; but he 
learned to control his passions, and to master his 
excessive tendency to speculation ; in the close, he 
looked down on all of human life with sympathy 
as from the heights ; and yet he did not desert the 
duties of the common road on which men travel 
side by side. 

The name of the poet may be spelt ' Shakspere,' 
for we have his autograph signature in that form ; 
but 'Shakespeare,' which appears on the title-page 
of books which he superintended, is also correct. 
There is less evidence in favour of the form ' Shak- 
speare. " 

During his life from 1597 onwards several of his plays 
were printed in quarto (see Halliwell-Phillipps' Outlines 
of the Life of Shakespeare, vol. i., 'Lifetime editions'). 
After his death the first collected edition of the plays 
appeared in 1623, in folio, under the superintendence of 
his fellow-actors Heminge and Condell. It is dedicated 
to the brothers, the Earls of Pembroke and of Mont- 
gomery. Seventeen of the plays contained in the volume 
had not been published in quarto. The arrangement of 
the contents is under the three divisions of comedy, 



\ 



SH A KESPEA RE. 23 

history, and tragedy. In 1632 this volume was reprinted 
( second folio ), and again in 1663-64 ( third folio ) and 
1685 (fourth folio). The 1664 issue of the third folio 
gives seven additional plays — Pericles ; The London Pro- 
digal; Thomas Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle, the 
good Lord Cobham ; The Puritan Widoiv ; A Yorkshire 
Tragedy ; Locrine. Some critics have supposed A York- 
shire Tragedy may possibly be by Shakespeare, or at 
least contain touches from his hand. 

The first critical edition of the plays is that by Nicholas 
Rowe (1709). He made some judicious corrections of 
the text, and gathered a few biographical materials, 
which he embodied in a brief sketch of Shakespeare's 
life. In 1725 appeared Pope's edition ; some of his 
critical emendations are happy, and his preface contains 
admirable remarks on the Shakespearian drama. Theo- 
bald, whose edition appeared in 1733, though the object 
of Pope's ridicule in the Dunciad, was a better scholar 
than Pope ; he collated early editions, proposed ingenious 
emendations, and very materially improved the text of 
nis author. Hanmer in the ' Oxford Edition ' (1744), and 
Warburton in his edition ( 1747 ), based on Pope's, made 
small advance on their predecessors. Warburton's text 
was severely criticised by Upton, Grey, Heath, and 
Edwards. The edition of Johnson (1765) is chiefly re- 
markable for its masterly preface ; he rightly came to 
distrust his own skill as a conjectural emender of the 
text, and he was not qualified by any profound knowledge 
of Elizabethan literature for the task of an editor. In 
1766 Steevens reprinted twenty of the early quartos, and 
from 1773 onwards Johnson's editorial work was ably 
supplemented by that of Steevens. In dealing with the 
text Steevens was learned and ingenious, but somewhat 
rash and lacking in reverence. Capeli's edition (1768) is 
the work of a true and laborious scholar. His learned 
Notes, Various Readings, and the School of Shakespeare 
were published posthumously in 1783. Much was done 
by Malone to ascertain the chronological order of the 
plays and to illustrate the history of the English theatre. 
In 1780 he edited the poems of Shakespeare and the 
doubtful plays of the 1664 folio. His edition of Shake- 
speare's works followed in 1790. He was modest, faith- 
ful, learned, judicious, but unhappily was not endowed 
with a feeling for the beauty of verse. Variorum editions, 
embodying the work of Johnson, Steevens, and Malone, 
appeared under the editorship of Reed in 1803 and 1813, 
and under the editorship of James Boswell ( the younger ) 
in 1821. Towards the close of the 18th century Shake- 
spearian critics were much occupied with the forgeries of 
S. W. H. Ireland. In 1796 the forger made his public 
confession. The criticism of Coleridge, and in a less 
degree that of Lamb and of Hazlitt, opened up new and 
better ways for Shakespearian criticism in the early part 
of the 19th century. Many valuable editions have 
been issued since the Variorum of 1821, among which 
may be mentioned those of Singer, Knight, Collier, Dyce, 



1 



24 SHAKESPEARE. 

Staunton Halliwell, the Cambridge Shakespeare, the 
Henry Irving Shakespeare. Germany has given us the 
excellent edition of Delius, and America those of Grant, 
White, Hudson, Rolfe, and the magnificent Variorum 
edition of certain plays by Furness. The Sonnets have 
appeared in two annotated editions — that of the present 
writer and that of Tyler. The Shakespeare Society (1841- 
53) did much to illustrate Shakespeare's writings by re- 
prints from Elizabethan literature ; the Collier (q.v. ) con- 
troversy helped to bring the society to an untimely break- 
down. The New Shakspere Society (1874 onwards) 
has carried on the work, and devoted itself in particular 
to the study of 'verse-tests' as giving indications of the 
chronology of the plays. A German Shakespeare Society 
has published annual volumes since 1865. In the biblio- 
graphy which follows some of the most important of the 
recent additions to the study of Shakespeare are named. 

Concordances : Mrs Cowden Clarke's Concordance (to 
Plays), Mrs Furness' Concordance to Poems, Schmidt's 
Lexicon. Grammar : Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar. 
Verse : W. Sidney Walker's Shakespeare's Versification 
and his Criticisms on Shakespeare (textual notes), 
Bathurst s Changes in Shakespeare } s Versification. Chron- 
ology: Stoke's Chronological Order of Shakespeare 's Plays. 
Sources : Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, Courtenay's 
Commentaries on the Historical Plays, Skeat's Shake- 
speare's Plutarch. Life: Halliwell- Phillipps' Outlines of 
the Life of Shakespeare, Fleay's Life and Work of Shake- 
speare. Portraits : J. Parker Norris' Portraits of Shake- 
speare. Criticism : Coleridge's Shakespeare Notes ; Dow- 
den's Shakespeare, his Mind and Art, and Shakespeare 
Primer; Hudson, Shakespeare, his Life, Art, and Char- 
acters ; Gervinus, Commentaries ; Lloyd's Critical Essays 
on Shakespeare! s Plays; Mrs Jameson, Characteristics 
of Women; Kreyssig's Vorlcsuncfen ilber Shakespeare; 
Ulrici's Shakespeare' s Dramatische Kunst. Dramatic 
History : Collier's English Dramatic Poetry and History 
of the Stage ; Fleay's Chronicle of the English Drama, 
1559-1642 ; Ward's English Dramatic Literature. Biblio- 
graphy : Bonn's Bibliography, ' Shakespeare' in Lowndes's 
Bibliography and Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, 
Thimm's Shakespeariana, Mullen's Catalogue of the 
Shakespeare Memorial Library, Birmingham. The litera- 
ture in all languages is vast and includes thousands of 
titles. 

See also in this work the articles on Alleyn, Delia 
Bacon, Bowdler, Boydell, Burbage, Collier, Cowden- 
Clarke, Delius, Drama, Dyce, Elze, Furnivall, Ulrici, S. 
W. H. Ireland, Johnson, Knight, Halliwell-Phillipps, 
Staunton, Steevens, Stratford-on-Avon, Theobald, Tieck, 
Grant White, &c. Of the French translations the best 
known are those of Victor Hugo fils (1859-62) and Mon- 
tegut (1868-73) ; of the German, those associated with 
the names of Wieland (in prose, 1762-66), Schlegel 
(1801-10) and Tieck, Dingelstedt (1865-70) and Boden- 
stedt (1867-71 ; 3d ed. 1878). 






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